Walking towards the green shack, M kicks the door open and hauls the struggling zombie towards a pair of blood-stained restraints in the back of the room. After setting her steel rod next to the wall, she secures its arms and legs with thick, metal cuffs and places a leather band over the zombie’s abdomen. Once the zombie is unable to make any significant movement, she begins cutting the zombie’s ragged, yellow shirt, the slashes forming the letter “M”. She’s almost finished with her mark when she hears a noise by the door and flinches, ripping more fabric than she had intended. Her knife grazes the zombie’s rubbery skin.
'"Come on, M, we know you’re here.” The man’s coarse voice booms through the forest. “Let’s be honest, you’re always here. No need to be shy.”
M swears under her breath and looks down at the mid-level scavenging group of men from her colony. She watches their heads swing back and forth, their sunburnt necks craning to see where she is hiding. The man who called out to her meets her gaze and smiles. His patchy skin wrinkles around the edges of his deep blue eyes as he winks.'...
"A brisk gust of wind glides against M’s sweaty face as she opens the gate to the outside. The grass is brown and crisp. Burnt orange leaves tumble haphazardly across the dimly lit country side while the trees’ skeletal limbs quake in the strong autumn breeze. M inhales the air deeply and stretches her shoulders before heading toward a dilapidated, green shack to the south of her colony. She arrives and digs through the sooty dirt, retrieving a four-foot-long steel pole, several yards of blood-encrusted rope, and a rusting butcher’s knife. Once she assembles her things she walks from tree to tree, watching her surroundings carefully."...
"M kneels next to the toilet and pours the last cup of water into the bathtub behind her back. Peering passed the doorway, she checks to see if anyone is nearby before sifting through the contents of a worn, plastic bag and dumping them into the porcelain bowl. The smell of decaying bones, rotting meat, and runny tofu punishes her nose yet she doesn’t react, mixing the putrid substance with one hand while searching for the pints of blood with the other. When she finally finds them, she rips each bag open with her teeth and pours her blood carefully over the congealed mess. She folds the pile continuously with her hand, the frigidness of her own blood numbs her fingertips."...
"The sliding door creaks loudly as the security clearance signal echoes through the air. Corroded metal scratches the frame audibly and a young woman calmly strolls into the clinic. The alarm fades as the door feebly returns to its original position. The woman’s dark, matte hair clings to her face as her dull, shifty eyes scan the room. The woman does not smile as she continues to step between worn reclining chairs and rusted medical trays. She purposely avoids eye contact with the floor associates in the room.
The phlebotomist stares at the woman incredulously, wondering why anyone would be roaming around the clinic at 2:30 in the morning, let alone wandering the blood donation ward. She’s about to ask the woman to come back later when the nurse overseeing her shift interrupts her train of thought."...
